EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Some space has already been given in this series to the English and their relation to the New World, especially the latter half of Cheyney’s European Background of American History, which deals with the religious, social, and political institutions which the English colonists brought with them; and chapter v. of Bourne’s Spain in America, describing the Cabot voyages.  This volume begins a detailed story of the English settlement, and its title indicates the conception of the author that during the first half-century the American colonies were simply outlying portions of the English nation, but that owing to disturbances culminating in civil war they had the opportunity to develop on lines not suggested by the home government.

The first two chapters deal with the unsuccessful attempts to plant English colonies, especially by Gilbert and Raleigh.  These beginnings are important because they proved the difficulty of planting colonies through individual enterprise.  At the same time the author brings out clearly the various motives for colonization—­the spirit of adventure, the desire to enjoy a new life, and the intent to harm the commerce of the colonies of Spain.

In chapters iii. to vi. the author describes the final founding of the first successful colony, Virginia, and emphasizes four notable characteristics of that movement.  The first is the creation of colonizing companies (a part of the movement described in its more general features by Cheyney in his chapters vii. and viii.).  The second is the great waste of money and the awful sacrifice of human life caused by the failure of the colonizers to adapt themselves to the conditions of life in America.  That the people of Virginia should be fed on grain brought from England, should build their houses in a swamp, should spend their feeble energies in military executions of one another is an unhappy story made none the pleasanter by the knowledge that the founders of the company in England were spending freely of their substance and their effort on the colony.  The third element in the growth of Virginia is the introduction of the staple crop, always in demand, and adapted to the soil of Virginia.  Tobacco, after 1616, speedily became the main interest of Virginia, and without tobacco it must have gone down.  A fourth characteristic is the early evidence of an unconquerable desire for self-government, brought out in the movements of the first assembly of 1619 and the later colonial government:  here we have the germ of the later American system of government.

The founding of the neighboring colony of Maryland (chapters vii. and viii.) marks the first of the proprietary colonies; it followed by twenty-five years and had the advantage of the unhappy experience of Virginia and of very capable management.  The author shows how little Maryland deserves the name of a Catholic colony, and he develops the Kent Island episode, the first serious boundary controversy between two English commonwealths in America.